


Recompose

by KeelTheLight (K9Lasko)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Asexuality, Autism Spectrum, Domestic Violence, Drug Addiction, M/M, Post Everything, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:51:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K9Lasko/pseuds/KeelTheLight
Summary: There had been two emotions: shock, humiliation.He hated himself. He hated himself. He hated himself.





	Recompose

Sherlock occupied the narrow balcony, a solitary figure against a grey March sky. He slouched in a hideously upholstered chair — clearly meant for indoor use only — and stared at the backsides of identikit row houses that lined the streets of this colourless West London neighbourhood. He held a lit cigarette between two fingers. Cradled a half-empty pack of Dunhills on his lap. Kept a flick-lighter close at hand, precariously balanced on his knee.

 

He kept watch on this ugly bit of scenery from under dark curly fringe that had long begun to turn into a mess of tangled frizz. He kept his expression cool and vacant. Here, in his thoughts, he was untouchable. He was inaccessible. He was free from expectation. He was safe — from others, if not himself.

 

But also bored. So very, very bored by this sick spectacle he’d got himself involved in. The boredom mixed with thick paranoia and clouded normal rational thought.

 

Been three days of this Hell.

 

He missed Rosie, her bright child’s smile, her innocent gaze. He longed to scoop her up, rest her on his hip, and point out little useless things which she’d repeat. Book. Skull. Microscope (although she tended to abbreviate that one to “my-scope”). Mycroft (she abbreviated that one to “uncle dick head,” which amused Sherlock endlessly).

 

He missed the way his own bedsheets felt against his skin. Missed how the sunlight filtered just so through the sitting room window and illuminated the dust that gathered on the end table. Missed how tea sometimes just “happened,” although he knew by now it was Mrs Hudson who set it up for him and John.

 

He missed John; he couldn’t avoid it.

 

Unbearable. Without use. Achingly saccharine. This sentiment. This guilt. Rare and lethal, that combination. He revisited over and over what led up to his present situation

 

This was his fault alone. His involuntary exile. Underneath everything, it was, and now he found himself sifting through the minutia of every single interaction he had with John for the past several months. Sherlock knew he was a “difficult person.” He’d heard all about it in all its variants from all sorts of acquaintances and strangers; he knew the approximate definition, but didn’t quite understand. Sherlock was a “difficult person” and he was far from fluent in the behavioural language of the neurotypical, and John tolerated it like the good and kind and patient man he was and always had been. John tolerated him.

 

“Ah, he lives.” Mycroft. His voice was droll yet cautious, but not in a way meant to be kind. Mycroft wasn’t often kind; rather, he was _pleasant_. And pleasant and kind weren’t the same thing.

 

Somewhere in his brain, Sherlock was embarrassed to be found like this. In this pathetic state. This state of mental hysteria hidden neatly behind an affectless exterior. Wouldn’t do to get emotional. Wouldn’t do to express anything at all. Sherlock didn’t need to think of, or guess at, or translate normal human reactions when he chose to simply display _nothing_.

 

_Give nothing away, Sherlock. You’re better than this. You’re above this. You are a perfect machine._

 

This was Sherlock’s problem. A lot going on behind the eyes — such a busy, busy mind — but not nearly enough emotional faculty to guide him safely through life.

 

Wisely, Mycroft chose to stay in the open doorway. He didn’t move to step foot on the balcony proper. He would cede this space to Sherlock, for the time being. “Did you sleep well, I hope?” Again, so _pleasant._

 

Sherlock shifted his gaze onto his elder brother, but only for a moment. His dark mood saturated the area and soaked into the floorboards like blood. He let out a long sigh after a particularly pleasurable drag from his cigarette. It was almost burnt down to the filter. He’d be lighting another in a moment, and he’d add this spent one to the neat little line-up of ends assembled on the balcony’s railing.

 

Mycroft forged on, “Must say, you look in picture-perfect good health, little brother.” There was the sarcasm. The judgement. _Pathetic_ , said his face.

 

“Thank you,” said Sherlock. He wasn’t sure why Mycroft even bothered trying to get a rise out of him. It was awkward.

 

“Someone from the Met called for you today. On the house phone. You’re not answering your mobile, apparently.”

 

“No. Busy,” Sherlock drawled. “So who was it?” Impatience edged its way into his voice.

 

_Was it Lestrade?_ Sherlock thought. Surely, Mycroft would have mentioned Lestrade by name if it had been. Sherlock hadn’t yet heard a thing from him since that night. He knew Lestrade tolerated him, too, if not to the extent John did. _There are limits_ , Sherlock thought. _I am not useful like this._

 

“I am not your secretary,” said Mycroft. But then he relented, “They want you to come in for an interview about your little incident.”

 

‘Little incident.’ How funny. When Sherlock looked at him, square in the eye, Mycroft was the picture of discomfort. It was amusing, somewhat. Mycroft didn’t seem to know what to do with himself, right here, right now, in this position. Emotions. Pesky thing, all of it.

 

With a hum, Sherlock gingerly reached down and stubbed out the finished cigarette in a puddle left by this morning’s drizzle. Then he just as slowly reached to place it next to its mates on the balcony railing. Ten of them now. He’d get through the pack before noon. That was one thing he couldn’t fail at and one thing he could understand fully without interpretation. Chemical reaction. He was enthralled with the nicotine.

 

_More, please._

 

Not as good as a needle. Nothing was ever as good as a needle.

 

No. Cannot think that.

 

Rosamund. There was always Rosamund.

 

Rosie, who called Mycroft ‘uncle dick head’ because Sherlock told her to. Rosie, who knew how to pronounce ‘microscope,’ almost. John’s daughter. John’s, not Sherlock’s.

 

He smiled at Mycroft, and it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Of course.”

 

Sherlock’s hands trembled slightly as he lit another cigarette. Despite the damp chill, sweat collected on his brow and slid down his back between his shoulder blades. He couldn’t hide these physical manifestations of severe anxiety. He also couldn’t hide the paleness of his face and the red, angry spots that stubbornly clustered on the right side of his chin near the corner of his chapped lip.

 

He couldn’t hide the bruise that darkened the side of his face, or the scab that was beginning to form right under his eye.

 

Ultimately, he dismissed Mycroft with nothing more than a vague shrug of a bony shoulder. He stared back into the distance, blew smoke at the dull English sky.

 

The next-door balcony was far too close for comfort, but thankfully vacant. It had a few potted plants, a bistro set consisting of one table and two chairs, and what looked like an empty rodent cage. It wasn’t anything like Mycroft’s balcony, which had been completely unfurnished until Sherlock dragged the chair outside.

 

There was an ash tree struggling to survive in the garden below. That neighbour had taken to collecting large blue plastic barrels for some reason. Strange, that. They cluttered the space, lined the stone garden walls, extended up the little rise at the end of the stone wall. One was toppled over, the lid popped off, nothing inside. Curious.

 

Useless observation.

 

He heard children shouting as they played in the nearby school yard. He bit his sore bottom lip with a yellowing tooth as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth again. He swallowed thickly. _Give nothing away, Sherlock. You. Are. A. Machine._ His free hand squeezed what was left of the packet of cigarettes, started to crush it until he realised what he was doing.

 

He’ll never see her again. Not after this. John might not ever allow it. After such violence, how could he? That was the way John thought. Everything, or nothing. Rosamund was everything.

 

Sherlock brought this on himself. This was Sherlock’s fault. He was a difficult person. He was a difficult person. He was a _difficult person_. A difficult person. _Difficult_. So fucking difficult. Hardly even a person.

 

He hated himself. He hated himself. He hated himself.

 

Mycroft was saying something in the background.

 

Sherlock wanted to wave him away like an irritating gnat. Instead, he said, “I’ll speak with Lestrade. It was a misunderstanding. That’s all.” The ‘now go away’ went unspoken. He couldn’t think of anything better to say with Mycroft’s ugly visage looming there in the doorway, much too close. Ugh! The brain fog. Intolerable.

 

Mycroft had done enough for him. He’d extracted Sherlock from hell and deposited him in a new one. He’d lent him this safe haven on a balcony. He didn’t have to do any of this for Sherlock, his troubled and troublesome little brother.

 

_I hate myself._

 

He thought, briefly, of the two ounces of cocaine tucked safely under a loose floorboard back home. How fucking simple it was to hacksaw through all the mental muck with an eighth up a nostril or in a vein. There was morphine, too, to follow.

 

Cigarettes and his brother’s condescending gaze only reminded him of the high he wanted to chase, and God he wanted to chase it, so badly. He wanted to chase it until he fell over stone dead from sheer ecstatic exhaustion. The up and down of it was euphoric. Better than sex, which made other people laugh, as if it were a joke.

 

Sherlock didn’t find it funny; he hated sex. When John wanted it, he tolerated it. He tolerated it like John tolerated him, so it was an equal trade-off, all things considered. John moved back in with him. He brought Rosie. Together, they created an odd family unit. John was entitled, to the flat and ultimately to Sherlock’s body. John was fantastic and kind. John was always gentle. John did not know what Sherlock was thinking, because Sherlock said he wanted it, said he enjoyed it.

 

Sherlock hated himself, because he was a difficult person, because he couldn’t stand sex, because he never really wanted it like everybody else wanted it and he didn’t understand _why._ And because he was a liar.

 

So he secretly fantasised about the needle. The syringe full. A dose that would take him for a ride. A dose that would show him that the world was FANTASTIC and not a living hell that was unnavigable and frustrating and unkind.

 

First, he would write a note. And a list. Just to be safe. Cover all the bases.

 

The last time had been a while ago. He’d run his hands over John’s back, felt his spine, the ridged vertebrae there. He had kissed John on the forehead, while John lazily mouthed at the underside of his jaw. The urgency was gone. They could live like this.

 

“I disagree, Sherlock. He smashed your face into a doorframe!” Shouting was vulgar, but Mycroft shouted now, straight at Sherlock’s bruised face. Maybe it would prompt his stupid pigheaded brother to extract his over-sized head from his arsehole.

 

And it did. It brought Sherlock right back to the present tense. Back to the reality of his bruised face that smarted, more so now than the day of. He’d been somewhat shocked then, probably.

 

“And I hit him right back!” Sherlock argued. “Do you think I am so easily overpowered? Please! Go find yourself another victim to rehabilitate, brother, because I am for sure not him.”

 

“No, you aren’t,” said Mycroft. “But you may be a statistic, and too full of yourself to realise it.”

 

Sherlock laughed in his face. “Oh, you can fuck right off.”

 

“Where is the gratitude? I bought your freedom from that sad little holding cell after your beloved John Watson put you there. I did not have to.” He frowned.

 

“Then why did you?” Sherlock bit out.

 

“Funny, almost,” Mycroft powered through his own irritation, “if your stubborn stupidity didn’t terrify me so much. But, if you feel so comfortable after the fact, I won’t prevent you from reinserting yourself where you think you belong.”

 

Once an addict, always an addict. No matter in what shade it presented itself. Mycroft had spent several years in the figurative trenches, fighting alongside Sherlock and against him, too. Sherlock would be troubled until the day he died; when Mycroft finally realised this, years ago, he spent an hour locked in a decrepit pub loo dealing with an unwelcome surge of premature grief.

 

Sherlock let out a gusty sigh and twisted his face into an ugly grimace of a smile. “Oh, please.” He stubbed out the rest of the cigarette. This one, he left on the ground. “Shall I thank you again, then?”

 

Mycroft pursed his lips. It was his default reaction to Sherlock’s more petulant moods. He looked like he’d just sucked on an extra tart lemon and the whole thing had gone straight for a sore molar towards the back of his mouth. “It’s a start,” he said with a grimace.

 

At a stalemate, the two stared at each other for longer than was comfortable for either. Sherlock’s hand twitched for another cigarette.

 

“Well,” Mycroft broke the uneasy silence, “don’t let me interrupt your well-earned solitude. By all means, carry on with this pathetic spiral. I am only the bearer of bad news.”

 

“A favour,” Sherlock suddenly muttered into his shaking palms. He had his face in his hands. His oily face rubbed roughly against them, until he made himself wince. The bruise was as painful as it looked.

 

Mycroft paused to listen. “Yes,” he said.

 

Sherlock said, “I wish to see Rosamund again.”

 

Mycroft’s look was odd, something between pity and misdirected remorse. “Sherlock—“ he began with caution.

 

The side of Sherlock's head throbbed in time with his pulse, and the abrasion under his eye still felt raw. He felt the weight of the child in his arms. Her smile. His smile. Felt the cool air around them as he pointed. “And what is that?” He spoke in her ear. John was beside them both, staring worriedly over the side of the Waterloo bridge at the Thames below, cold and brown.

 

“Bus,” said Rosie.

 

Sherlock was reluctant to admit that his memory of the entire incident was uncomfortably patchy. He remembered himself shouting something at John. Remembered anger, lots of it. Remembered dodging from John’s reaching hands, his angry face, and his accusations. Frustration and misunderstanding, the sound of it hitting a wall was tremendous. He didn’t remember what happened first, his fist reaching towards John or John’s hand grabbing him firmly by the hair — not a fair move, that — and _shoving_.

 

“If at least one more time before—“ Sherlock didn’t finish. His expression is hopeful yet distant. _Do not pity me._ _I cannot bear it._ “Could you ask him for me?”

 

He remembered how awareness came back in a patchwork put together all wrong, everything jumbled together and wobbly. He could recall how the floor suddenly dug into his knees. Didn’t remember falling. Could recall how he gagged once or twice — so odd, what a time to suddenly fall ill and vomit — but brought up nothing but tea and bile. And his face had felt wet and sticky. Odd. He had staggered to his feet, eventually. Saw blood on his hand. From where? John had Rosie in his arms as he paced, holding her head against the side of his neck. Why? She had wailed and wailed and it was hard to hear anything else over it, except for John murmuring. He was on his mobile phone. He couldn’t remember how he ended up back on the floor, cross-legged, clutching his face, and staring blearily at the matted down carpet pile. And there was Mrs Hudson, too, for some reason. And then there had been two constables.

 

There had been two emotions: shock, humiliation.

 

The responding police were impatient. “I’ll go,” Sherlock volunteered.

 

There was a medic. A woman who looked, oddly, like Molly Hooper. He stared at her as she gently treated the broken skin.

 

Sherlock blinked. He absently rubbed his wrists. Mycroft had disappeared from the doorway, and the door was tightly shut. He lit another cigarette. It took several attempts. He cannot recall if Mycroft ever answered his last question.

 

He was a fool to wish for the comfort of John’s child now of all times. He wasn’t entitled to her. He hated himself. He was a difficult person. He wanted a needle full of drugs but he knew he wouldn’t find that here. He’d have to smoke these cigarettes and hope for the best.

 

He hated himself. He was a difficult person.

 

He hated himself. He was a difficult person.

 

If he were less difficult, maybe he could be happy.

 

Sherlock’s back ached. He found himself spread on the hard ground, beside the chair. He stared at the grey English sky.

 

He would leave a note, yes, because that’s what people did. He learned that, the one time he fake-jumped from a building. Amazing, that. Such a trick.

 

He’d tell John that he’d been deceived. He would apologise. He would tell John that he hated having sex, that it wasn’t pleasurable, that he endured every second of it. Because Sherlock loved him, and it was something Sherlock couldn’t comprehend and he wanted to be forgiven.

 

Sherlock hated himself. John tolerated him until he didn’t. His aching face was a reminder.


End file.
